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Gish Jen is one of the most well-known contemporary Asian
American authors. She has published four popular novels and a
collection of short stories. Like Jen herself, the protagonists of
her mainly family-centered fiction are of Chinese American descent.
Jen’s writing style is humorous, but also contains dark and
questioning undercurrents that frequently emerge to cast a shadow
over the concluding chapters or paragraphs of her work. Jen’s
fiction is best appreciated in the context of Asian immigration,
the post-Civil Rights era, feminism and colorblind
multiculturalism.

Gish Jen was born in 1955 in Long Island, New York, and raised
in Queens, Yonkers and Scarsdale. Her parents were middle-class
immigrants from China. …

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